“The problem with problems is how we think about problems” he says...so good

Stay tuned.

A Beautful way to spend ones time...

Let’s not forget....the importance of how we spend our time and what we send OUT and to one another...

Stay tuned...

Stay Tuned

MMMM

​Stay tuned

Due to the timing of our Hula sisters celebration of life..I spent some inner working time, mindfulness if you will...in handling my own emotions with the anniversary of my Father's passing being around the horizon. I would be experiencing the beauty of Hula being a part of her celebration of life. This would be my first experience where Hula was not just accepted, it was expected. Natural here. Especially with Caroline being a Hula Dancer not just with us, but also when she was younger. It was seriously beautiful and I felt like a better person for being there. Additionally, one of the things that means the world to me is the space that exists between my mother, my father and myself. Since for the rest of my life the celebration of my own birth will now always also be the day my Father died. It's a thing and I want to be able to create something that honors us all. Some place within these last two years, although it is my birthday and the day my father died, I can't forget that my mother is the person who gave birth to me. She's pretty important. So, once again, it's the three of us from an essence standpoint and that has helped and allowed me to honor all things. Or at least that's what I'm working on anyway.

After the beautiful celebration of our Hula sisters life, I went home and slept for three solid hours, when I woke up, my first thought was a really important distinction. 
The distinction between a Funeral vs an actual celebration of someone's life.  

  What to Expect When you attend a celebration of someone’s life, you should expect to experience a joyful event. As the name implies, you’re there to celebrate rather than mourn. This is often at the request of the deceased before he or she died.

The event may appear to be more of a party than something commemorating the person’s death. It is less likely to go by the format and conventions of a religious funeral service.
Difference Between Celebration of Life and FuneralA funeral is typically a somber occasion where you speak in hushed tones and have a more subdued demeanor. A celebration of life is more commonly a casual get-together with emphasis more on the positive aspects of the person’s life. Those who attend may laugh as they talk about the experiences they had with the deceased.

This is what I personally want... a celebration of my life. I feel it as more loving and thoughtful to those left behind. 

I selected this video to illustrate the culture that I live in -so others can see how Hula is being given as an honorable gift for someone special. In this case it is for "Auntie".... If you listen to the young man speaking, and then watch the dance, you begin to understand what Hula is beyond the tourist stuff... This is essentially the essence of Hula as I am learning it. 

Prior to learning the story or what the song's meaning was, the first time I heard it, I felt it inside my heart in such a way, I wanted to understand what this song was about because it moved me so deeply. One thing led to another and I selected this song as a gift to give to my parents for their 52nd wedding anniversary. 

This is what lived in the space between my parents and myself in our now. 

However, even before this development, when I first arrived on this island I was invited to attend an event, a day where we would all get the opportunity to weave our family love legacy together generationally speaking. From my parents to me and from me to my son and also, for my own self love. I don't think people truly recognize, self love actually includes the love and acceptance of those who brought you into the world and the love and acceptance of those you brought into the world. It's all of it, everyone and all the things that live in the space between you. Not always easy, not always possible. However, if it is possible, it's an excellent idea. 

In my work with women in stepfamilies I am always advocating and encouraging women to recognize their relationship with their own father isn’t the same relationship their children are experiencing with the father of their children. And/or if you were not present in the other persons home when something went down, it’s hugely possible you are missing critical context. This is where conscious co-parenting comes in and why I truly believe it is critical that divorce parents do whatever they can to mend fences while building bridges in reverent time. Stay out of court if you can because the court isn’t supposed to make the decisions for your family. Families are supposed to make the decisions for the care and the well-being of the children. 
In this together even if you aren’t together. ​Again, if, when and where it is possible and if it's possible, it's an excellent idea. 

Mending fences while building bridges in reverent time isn't just something existing as an invitation in my work, it's who I am and how I live and how I love my own family. In this together, no different just because I happen to live 5000 miles away. 

"Family, Sacred Ground" means all of it. If you really want to love yourself and your family you have to ignore the ignorant, the projectors and the people who are still stuck in some kind of freudian story of their own. 

​At some point, and for me that process began when I was 25 years old- An age where...your parents are still your parents and you are still their child AND you are no longer a child.
​
You’re allowed to zig while everyone else is very busy zagging. What I mean is you are allowed to love your own parents and yourself by doing your own inner work because you’re commitment is to see yourself and them more clearly. As people. People who have their own stories. Stories that began long before you were born. You’re allowed to expand your own relationship with your own parents.


Even if no one else in your family understands that or you or even takes the time to find out what is true for you moment to moment.
Your truth and your right to honor all of who you are and honor all of who they are belongs to you. We are all allowed to do our work to expand in this way without anyone projecting their life story onto us. Just thought I'd mention that for anyone who may be interested....

I began to practice this song and do some tweaking to have the song honor the life time my parents spent together. You know, as their daughter. Hula is a story told and with the love, dedication and commitment to practicing I put into the gift that hula is meant to be...the vision was that I would be able to share a little about the meaning of the song and my love and commitment and the meaning of it all would move through me and touch their hearts in such a way they would be reminded that their lives and union mattered. I wanted to give them something that touched them and perhaps celebrate their next chapter as retired people who have endured and now they can return to enjoying one another after a lifetime of giving to everyone on all levels. Often at the expense of themselves. 

For me, as their daughter I felt it was their time. 

I would bring Hawaii to them and then eventually I would bring them to Hawaii. 

Then my father died 16 days before I could deliver this gift to them. My mother and I agreed I would give this gift at the Celebration of His life but then some outside influences used words like "Inappropriate" 

Needless to say, anyone interfering calling my gift or my love inappropriate....literally left my soul......bewildered. 

Plus, someone felt compelled to interfere in the space that belongs to my mother and myself. To me, that was someone taking advantage of a vulnerable woman who just lost her husband, my father. It was all very intense for me. Of course my mother and I worked it all out between ourselves. My mother is allowed to share her honest feelings with me at all times. Which is also something that belongs to us and has been something she and I have been doing for many years as well. We work it out and we will always work it out. She's my mom. 

One year later, my mother got a heart message from my Father...how beautiful they were still working together. She wanted me to come home and she wanted to create a space for me to dance. I would be with her and my fathers senior friends. I asked my fathers dear friend Jim if he would stand in for my Dad and he was quick to say yes. 
That day, I finally got to give my gift to my own parents. My parents dear friends received their friends daughter and her gift with so much love, feeling and emotion. They felt my story, which was my parents story and just like that, I felt complete. My heart felt mended and my soul no longer felt bewildered. 

​And now it's a year later...........

No one could have known they were getting in the way of me being able to honor my own parents. It was mostly a surprise. But here is what I learned and have been learning these past few years

1. People who see you or call you selfish are usually coming from a very selfish place within themselves. Only they can't see themselves all that clearly because they are usually distracted by their own lives. Their own values, their own beliefs, or their own grief and or perhaps who you were twenty-five years ago. It's important to catch up with people or at the very least ask. There was nothing inappropriate about me, my connection to my own parents or my gift. There was work for me to do to forgive. I don't see the benefit to being dishonest about that. 

2. The unhealed childhood stuff inside of me did not exist in the space between my parents and myself. Nor did it exist in my now. All of my natural instinctive moves, reactions and triggers stemmed from outside influences as a little girl who was always around family beyond my parents. I was taking it all in. My wound was a tribal wound that existed outside of my intact family of five. The deep work that I have done and I have studied at great length - Those of us who have big families know. There is favoritism and there are clicks and there are things said and done that we the little people are watching, observing, taking in and if these tribal things also happen to make our mothers cry -We feel and we see we witness all that is happening then and somehow, we remember it in our now, when our father dies. There is no one to blame for the history that existed or how that history landed on a child. There is just the need to acknowledge and move forward. 

I grew up with my fathers family. Not my mothers. Therefore, there wasn’t a whole lot of balance.

I actually have many more Uncles and Aunts and even some kind of Asian royalty as an aunt on my mothers side. However, I did not grow up knowing them nor do they know me. Not anything my fathers family did because if they came around, my family is such that they would have been welcome and invited. But as a sensitive child I always felt that imbalance somehow. I sensed on a certain level my mother was alone somehow, even though she wasn't, yet from this perspective and on a certain level, she was. 

3. Having your soul bewildered and being sent the message that you do not belong to your own family, that your love and your gift is inappropriate...has the power to damage your sense of self because your soul knows-you are an important part of your father, that you very much DO belong and are a part of your own parents. Your soul actually knows this. I began to understand many of the homeless people I see and speak to on the daily here. The one's whose souls have clearly been bewildered and I have to wonder where it was or who it was that knowingly or unknowingly bewildered their souls.

Through my depression, my hair falling out and so much more.... I felt this gravitational pulling and full awareness that it could very easily be me, on the streets, homeless with a bewildered soul. Before there was compassion, empathy and lessons. Then there was this gravitational pulling and that was a very different experience to have. Peri-menopause took a turn for the worse through this and that wasn't helpful however, it was an amazing opportunity to follow and listen to what my body/mind needed. 

What people don't seem to understand is, I am also like my father in the way where he didn't like to burden people with what was really going on for him when it came to some very serious stuff. Add onto that how when my son's father died in March, I somehow ended up experiencing some strange "Survival guilt" I literally felt guilty for being alive. This I have come to understand as me being a compassionate mother. Per my awesome (also retired dearest friend who was also a trauma  and family therapist for decades and she remains on track with all the newer evolutionary, innovative updated research. But also perhaps living with a man who had that most of his life...I would assume that was natural for me to experience at some point in my life. I don't know if that is true, I only know.... 

This is what people mean when they say "check on your strong friend" Yet that's a tough one with me because I'm not a fan of all that sympathy LOL Catch 22 

My father was a U.S. Marine in the Vietnam War and I now know 500% more about that war through my two years of research and it is through my mother creating space for me to give my gift and my research on the Vietnam war that took me out of depression and into awareness at a level that strengthened me on the level of three generations. 

My father was a part of Tet and he was also stationed in one of the hottest spots for Agent Orange.

It was only after my father passed away that I heard some stories that I have never heard before.
1. When he returned from the war he returned with a severe rash. That would be a rash from Agent Orange. 
2. These words came out of my mothers mouth "We always suspected Donovan's birth defects were because of agent orange" 

To paint this picture more fully, Donovan is my son. The one who died. I am hearing this for the first time and it's now 25 years later. I am being given critical information about my own life, the life of my children too. The impact of the Vietnam war and agent orange and how my fathers time serving our country could be what caused something that changed the direction of my life. 

It has taken me almost two years to do the research as thoroughly as I could. The more I educated myself, the more peaceful I felt. The more I learned, the more I understood my own existence, my own experience and my own truth. The more I allowed myself to understand the truth of the impact this war has had on my family and millions of people, millions of families, the more compassion I had for everyone, including myself and I was able to share just enough with my son Joseph that a significant part of his life also made sense to him. 

Education is power and I for sure.... needed my power back. 

Christina WhinneryPublished on Jan 5, 2018 

​

Moving the way my love moves..... only stopping for what blocks are my blocks....

I've been saying this....There was a lot for me to reconcile.

Stay Tuned.....

Our Dear Hula Sister Carolyn! 

I did not have much knowledge, time or experience with Madam. She was kind to me though. I arrived in class one day, late, with a bloody knee from purposely falling off my bike to avoid crashing into a mother with her baby.... She never had children however her motherly instinct and care was instant and really just so endearing. She was a gentle woman in class who carried herself with the dignity and grace most of the women in class have. 

Witnessing her family and friends celebrate and share her life was absolutely beautiful. It was lovely actually. We laughed at all the funny family memories and we cried when our hearts were touched. I loved the opportunity to know her life story more deeply. She was an incredible woman who had given so much in her over 80 years. A truly fascinating life. 

The evening before, my hula sisters got together and made these lei's pictured above. Flowers from one of our hula sisters trees in her back yard. Together they gathered in honor of our hula sister. When I arrived, there was one for me too. The longer lei was folded to make a chocker like lei for when they danced to honor her. It was beautiful. 

I'm grateful


Stay Tuned 

I haven't learned this song, so I won't be dancing with my hula sisters. This will be my first time attending a celebration of life here in Hawaii. 

Twitter is one of those things that I haven't really understood and haven't really tried to understand until recently. Now that I have, I wish to return to the days where I was clueless. 

 Alex Berezow wrote a fascinating article titled 

Algorithm Predicts If Twitter Users Are Becoming Mentally Ill

In it, he writes" 

People who use social media reveal an awful lot about themselves. Much of the time, this is purposeful, as users share their political opinions and religious beliefs. But they also could be revealing things of which they are completely unaware, such as a deterioration in their mental health. Subtle alterations in the way a person communicates on Twitter could reveal the onset of conditions such as depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
An interdisciplinary team of American scientists analyzed Twitter data from 105 patients with clinically diagnosed depression and 99 healthy controls. The team's goal was to determine, using a supervised learning algorithm, if they could detect telltale changes in language that serve as potential markers of depression. Indeed, they could.
Depressed people tended to use more negative words like no, never, and death and fewer positive ones like happyand photo. Additionally, the algorithm detected signs of depression 100 to 200 days before the depressed patients were clinically diagnosed, which means that their algorithm could serve as a predictive tool.

I went, I saw, I actively participated. I dove in and found myself quickly swimming back out of the Twitter waters because the people there are so deeply thirsty, they would drown you and your mental health in a second just to get noticed on Twitter. 


It is insanity times 10000x 


Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. Jack get the hell OFF of Twitter before you become sick. 


By Jack, I mean ME. 

​
New Software Tool Can Predict Individual Risk for PTSD
Investigators have created a software model that can accurately identify 800 different ways people are at increased risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Researchers from New York University Langone Medical Center believe the new model will permit, for the first time, a personalized prediction guide for PTSD.
Study results have been published in the journal BMC Psychiatry.
“Our study shows that high-risk individuals who have experienced a traumatic event can be identified less than two weeks after they are first seen in the emergency department,” says Arieh Y. Shalev, M.D., the Barbara Wilson Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at New York University Langone.
“Until now, we have not had a tool — in this case a computational algorithm — that can weigh the many different ways in which trauma occurs to individuals and provides a personalized risk estimate.”
Historically, clinicians have been limited by computation methods that were only capable of calculating the average risk for entire groups of survivors. And those have proven to be insufficient as an individual risk prediction tool.
The new algorithm applied risk prediction tools currently used to predict the growth of cancer, to predicting PTSD.
Researchers designed the study to uncover interchangeable, maximally predictive sets of early risk indicators and build a new algorithm using a model previously developed at the New York University Center for Health Bioinformatics for molecular and cancer research.
The tool showed that, when applied to data collected within ten days of a traumatic event, it can more accurately predict who is likely to develop PTSD despite the many ways in which traumatic events occur.
Data crunched into the algorithm includes variables on type of event, early symptoms, and emergency department findings.
“Until recently, we mainly used early symptoms to predict PTSD, and it had its drawbacks,” Shalev said.
“This study extends our ability to predict effectively. For example, it shows that features like the occurrence of head trauma, duration of stay in the emergency department, or survivors’ expressing a need for help, can be integrated into a predictive tool and improve the prediction.”
Devising a strong predictive model also is imperative for tailoring prevention efforts for people at risk for developing PTSD, Shalev adds.
Shalev’s latest study builds on data originally gathered from the Jerusalem Trauma Outreach and Prevention Study, which he and colleagues conducted at Hadassah Hospital in Israel and which previously was published in Archives of General Psychiatry.
That study concluded that two forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy, prolonged exposure and cognitive therapy, were equally effective in preventing PTSD in recent survivors.
Shalev warned, though, that this publication is a “proof of concept” paper. For robust prediction across conditions, he said, the identified algorithm needs to be used to gather knowledge gained in traumatic events experienced by other patient populations and traumatic events, beyond those analyzed from the earlier study.
To build a generalized predictive model, the research team has already received datasets from 19 other centers worldwide in a study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, designed to produce a comprehensive predictive algorithm. It is being conducted in collaboration with researchers from Columbia and Harvard universities,
“In the future, we hope that we will be better able to tailor treatment approaches based on more personalized risk assessment,” Shalev said. “PTSD exacts a heavy toll on affected individuals and society.”
New studies in the U.S. and through the World Health Organization suggests the majority of living adults will experience at least one traumatic event during their lifetime. Moreover, five to ten percent of those exposed to traumatic events may develop PTSD.


In closing, if He Who Shall Not Be Named wants to make America great again...he really should get the hell off of Twitter. More than anyone else in the country. 

That. Is. All.

Stay tuned

This weekend, It all started with me on a ladder helping a friend clean the top of her cupboards in her kitchen. I'm tall, but I'm not that tall and she likes how quickly I get things done. This moment inspired me to borrow her ladder to clean my own place just as thoroughly. Not just does this spark joy but also, why and how did I accumulate so many things? You can't see it, it's all placed inside but I know it's there.

I'm only half way done and I've already given away so many things.

Cleaning for me is it's own ritual that often allows me to declutter and get present to other areas of my life as well.
I really like it and a part of me always has. I think that's because of my mother and music. Chores were often done to the sound of music when I was a kid and music makes everything so much better. However, I need a break from music as well right now. Just a little one....

While I'm on this path, this path of cleaning and minding my own business, being responsible for my own space....let me see what I want to watch and listen to as I'm doing the deeper cleaning, after all..I live alone and can do these types of things.....it's not really and no one can tell me otherwise as much as its...aloneness allows for these types of things... 

So.......What do I want to watch as I do this deep cleaning? 

I like to watch things first and then read the reviews of others. This allows me to have my own experience without anyone else's influence. Very often I find someone else's review to be the opposite of my own experience anyway so why allow that to influence me? Yet after I am curious as to how others experience these types of things. 

For me, the documentary delivered based on it's actual title.  These women told us all exactly what they were thinking plus they shared their personal journey's from that time period to now. The second wave of feminism is just one of four waves. There is this thing now where titles of articles and content within the article, does not align. The goal is to upset people just enough to have them open the article with the title and then calm them down when they read it. Yet a lot of the time, people don't actually take the time to read the articles. Then the comments are 500 triggered people who are only triggered because they didn't take the time to actually read the article. It's brutal to witness actually and it's also just another area where "More attention, less pressure" would be more kind and actually, more honest. 

Anyway..... 

I thought it was pretty cool to have these women come together after forty years while looking at their own image in a book of photographs by Cynthia MacAdams. The book was published in 1977. When I was eight years old. 

Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, and Michelle Phillips were all photographed in the book as well. It was interesting to hear their stories as women who were actually there at that time. 

When I began to look at articles/reviews after watching, I noticed younger women who were not born during the second wave, were writing reviews and for them, this documentary was experienced  as "Not Good Enough" and lacking focus. 

I couldn't connect to that experience. It doesn't resonate.

For me, the women in the documentary literally shared what they were thinking at that moment, the moment those images of them were taken, how life was for them, their personal insights

"Not good enough" Not focused... These "reviews" landed on me in such a way...my thoughts floated to.....
How much do you expect these women to give you? They've done their part, are still showing up and I think that's pretty generous. 

Reverence would be nice.... Just my own floating "me being me" thoughts...they come...and they go....

Anyway...

Each woman had something of value to contribute. A little golden nugget that could and will land and resonate on many women today. 

Jane Fonda states: : "I just learned to say no as a complete sentence about 10 years ago" as she spoke on all the things she hated doing but did anyway all throughout her own career. There really isn't a woman that I know who hasn't struggled with this in some point or in some area of her life. She may be good with no now, but that has not always been true. And if you have a strong connection with other women who are both strong and soft, you know the truth of this. 

Wendy JN Lee, a young woman,  editor, producer and director shares her nature vs personality aspects she has had to cultivate in her industry. She speaks on how her nature is gentle and being more aggressive was something that she had to develop. She also explained she didn't realize the importance of feminism until she became more conscious. When she was looking through the book, she saw women who were free to be themselves. That felt good to her. "It makes you want to be free too" 

The opening scene gave me goose bumps. Holy wow!!!! Talk about owning your world, owning your history, owning your power. She is amazing!

I found myself moving all around, feeling energized, clapping...saying out loud "YAY!!!!!" 

Some of the lyrics in some of the songs.....mid=way....The conservative part of me was like whoa. yet the woman who has been single since 2015 totally understood, I get it....and other parts, I don't have the black heritage so I can only listen to discover...

Sometimes, it really does take balls to be a woman....


Break time over...time to finish what I started

​Stay tuned

Yet, one must be vigilant and careful about this particular Game Changer... As it can be used and abused just like everything else. 

The entire point is to come from a place of self and recognize we have the power to grow in our communication based on this rather than hold grudges or remain hurt by words spoken within heated moments. It's an evolutionary thing. Just spoke on this in my newer three minute podcast

(Link below) 


Natural Rhythms Guides. What does it mean to hold your shape and own your space? When is it going to generate more connection & solutions.

https://www.chirpapp.com/post/gvNL8ZrNe3

Oh let me learn, from all the ways I fail.
Oh let me walk, each day a little kinder.
Oh let me walk, each day a little wiser.
Oh let me live in a wholly holy way.
Oh let me love in a wholly holy way.

Not everyone has the desire to expand into the WHOLLY-Holy way. It's a very expansive integration process that's deeply personal and very individual (in my opinion) 

This line is of particular importance to me personally. I'm pretty good at making mistakes. Yet I've noticed lately... What may appear to someone else as my failure has really been a part of my greatest growth. 

That is equally true for me as it is for anyone else. The other day I was on the phone with someone. I called this person to gather information for another person. My intent was to find out the right information and get information for the best possible outcome. As a woman, and my title on this call-I could hear I wasn't being heard. I'm learning and trying different styles as I go. 

Communication is the response you get...okay, I better be more clear here. Let me stop this person from their assumption. Cut, hold on. You aren't hearing me so let me try this again because I really want to be sure nothing gets lost and we don't spend an exceedingly large chunk of this conversation talking about things I'm not remotely trying to have happen. 

You want to send me down this road, with your assumptions. I would prefer we don't waste time. That is also me not wanting to waste your time either. Let's stay on point. 

It's tricky, you really have to come from that place where you understand, your point and hold your shape in recognizing, whatever communication you are dishing out isn't working, so you -on the fly and on the spot have to change your position just to be heard. While you are doing that you have to repeatedly let another person know you respect them greatly, You understand they have knowledge, and that really isn't being questioned on any level. The problem is, you aren't hearing me. That can cause an entire breakdown in and of itself, so you have to keep readjusting because you are coming from the place of: Communication is, the response that you are getting and this matters to you so you do it. You do it, you make mistakes and you do it. It's a practice. 

In Expanded Consciousness the theme with Communication is

Communication is an art and you are the artist. What that means is not everyone is going to appreciate your art work (Communication)  and you are not going to appreciate other people's art work. That is no reason to stop being an artist. (Stop communicating)  You keep practicing, keep creating art, keep growing, keep cultivating, keep evolving, keep making mistakes, keep having wins, big or small. Yet artists also need to take care of themselves on the level of t heir physiology. If we approach communication from these models. 

Communication is the response you receive AND Communication is an Art and you are the Artist... something expands and something contracts. 

All stream of consciousness means is: The first thing that comes into your consciousness. It's what is true for you. Unfiltered, no other opinions. And in this case I would say it's that very individual, very personal space that belongs to you -in this exact moment. 

On our call the questions all began with WHAT HAPPENED WHEN? 

Q: What happened when you were a child and your mom got angry? 

My Answer: N/A 

Q What happened when you were a child and your dad got angry?

My Answer: You knew that he was. 

Q What happened when you were a child and you got angry at your mother?

My Answer: N/A It's impossible to get angry at a woman who has never been angry at you. 

Q What happened when you were a child and you got angry at your Dad

My answer:  I cried and said it very very loudly -into my pillow so no one could hear.. This changed as I grew....

Q: What happens when your partner gets angry at you? 

My Answer: It depends. 

Q What happens when you get angry at your partner?

My answer: It depends. Yet, mostly I say it when I feel it, just like my father. 
However, it actually takes a lot for me to get angry if I have chosen to be with someone. Just like my mother. I prefer to be warm, soft and gentle in my approach, when that doesn't work, after so many times, mmmm all bets are off 
So it seems important to choose carefully..... for the best results.....


And I like that about me

​Stay tuned